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State of the Switch

One year ago today Nintendo pulled back the veil on project NX which was revealed to be a hybrid home/portable console called Nintendo Switch.

I was instantly impressed by the concept and how well the original trailer showed it off. After being down on Nintendo in the Wii era, I came back to the company with the Wii U, a console with excellent games but a terrible ecosystem. The Wii U ultimately didn’t do enough to distinguish itself from the original Wii or Microsoft and Sony’s consoles and failed. Nintendo badly needed a win with their next device and the Switch looked promising.

Now here we are 7 months out from the system’s launch. The Switch remains the most interesting and exciting game consoles in years.

I exhaustively catalogued my thoughts on the Switch in a review earlier this year. Since then quite a few fantastic games have premiered or been ported to the system and some system updates have dropped.

The Good

I have mostly good things to say about the Switch. The library of games has been absolutely fantastic for the first year of a console. Zelda and Mario Kart led the way with a host of unique, mostly high-quality indie games filling in the gaps between major releases.

Although Splatoon and ARMS weren’t my thing, they were both new, exciting franchises that took advantage of Nintendo’s unique strengths in hardware and software development.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle went from being the subject of ridicule when it was leaked earlier this year to being an incredibly (critically and commercially) successful merger of Mario, Rabbids, and turn-based strategy puzzling.

Recently there have been some indie heavy-hitter making their debut on Switch like Axiom Verge, Golf Story, and Steamworld Dig 2. And much to my surprise, I am once again finding myself enthralled with Stardew Valley now that it’s available portably.

Super Mario Odyssey, one of the most anticipated games of the year, launches next week. Despite how incredible Breath of the Wild was, Mario Odyssey looks like it could be even better and most certainly will be a system-selling game.

Also of note: you can actually buy a Switch now without too much trouble. I expect the holiday rush will find them going out of stock again (especially post-Mario launch).

Just yesterday, the 4.0 system update dropped with a new video capture feature and a system transfer feature. The video capture is so far limited to 30 second clips and only in certain games that support the feature. but it’s kind of crazy that such a feature even exists on a portable machine.

4.0 also enables support for wireless Bluetooth headphones and headsets which gives hope that voice chat might be integrated directly in the system in the future rather than relegated to a smartphone app.

The Bad

The Switch remains a fairly barebones system outside of playing games. For me, that’s mostly fine. I don’t need a web browser, Netflix, or YouTube. I have that everywhere else. But other features found on Xbox, Playstation, and Steam like cloud saves and a more robust storefront would be welcome additions.

Virtual Console is still nowhere to be found. I was annoyed, actually, when Nintendo announced the SNES Classic Edition, a followup to last year’s hot NES Classic Edition which was infamously hard to get due to low stock. These mini-consoles feature some of Nintendo’s most beloved classic games – games I would love to play on Switch – not some stupid box tethered to my TV with too-short cords.

The only thing Nintendo has said about classic games on Switch is that some amount of them will be available with their paid online service. Unfortunately, they’ve delayed the launch of that service and Nintendo’s past online service offerings do little to inspire confidence that they will get things right when it does launch.

I haven’t had any hardware issues aside from the left Joycon connectivity issue at launch which Nintendo fixed quickly for free. But I will say that when playing portably the system can be a bit creaky. While my Joycon are still firmly attached to the side of tablet, there’s just a little wiggle to them that I hate. It’s never been a problem. I just wish the attachments felt a little more solid, especially when playing more intense games.

The Ugly

The Switch’s online app came out for smartphones over the summer. Meant to connect players in online gaming sessions and allow for voice chat in the most backward way possible, it lived up to the legacy of Nintendo really not getting the internet.

Looking Forward

The aging 3DS is still hanging on with notable Metroid, Mario & Luigi, and Pokemon remakes all coming out in the latter half of this year. The Switch will almost certainly never sell as well as Nintendo’s cheaper portable platforms of the past and such a large install base means more potential game sales for any given title on that platform. It’s unlikely that Nintendo will totally stop making games for 3DS as long as there’s enough profit there. But it’s hard to imagine a world in which Nintendo releases a 3DS successor. One way or another the Switch will supplant it despite the number of 3DSes sold.

Switch sales have been very promising though and industry reaction is positive. That is great news for indie games and third-party games coming to the system. It also sounds like Nintendo is soliciting a diverse selection of games for their console including the sort of hardcore western games that generally don’t appear on Nintendo’s platforms.

One year ago, nobody would have ever guessed that DOOM (2016) would come to Nintendo’s next console, but there it is alongside Skyrim, L.A. Noire, and Wolfenstein II – all third party games coming to the system soon. Personally I don’t really care to play any of these on Switch, but it’s great to see that support. Third party games like FIFA and NBA 2K are more important for mass appeal of the platform. Fortunately both of those are reportedly solid ports.

The Switch has become my go-to platform for most kinds of indie games. Given the choice between sitting at my desk, on my couch, or lying on my back to play a game, I’m going to choose that last option. Playing games is one of the ways I relax and sitting at my desk at home after sitting at a desk all day at work isn’t nearly as attractive.

Nintendo itself has announced a number first party games coming in the future. Franky none of them are as exciting as Zelda or Mario – not yet, anyway – but a system this successful is much more likely to have the full weight of Nintendo’s game studios behind it. And that’s very exciting given the stellar games we’ve been seeing in recent years.

Back on the Wii U, Nintendo’s gems were hidden behind bad marketing and a confusing system. With the Switch, Nintendo is once again making a console people actually want to buy and games that are even better.